Matt

Yeh, but that's just an mp3-cd player. Except sony don't want you to use mp3, so they invent their own format - atrac. It's the same as appe with AAC, except apple allow you to use mp3 on their devices.

I didn't realise that the second part would have better graphics!?! That seems a bit strange! Oh well. Getting into it, now. But the AI really puts me off quite a bit. I think once you get over the visuals, thats the only thing that really nags at you. And the water really DOES look lovely.

Really? Because the AI is HORRIBLE. The IGN review probably says it better than I could. The LIVE ply seems pretty solid, though. The vehicles are ace!

Picked up Farcry today! I didn't play it on PC or Xbox, so the game is totally new to me. The gameplay seems pretty nice, and the island is a fun place to have the game take place on. But, unfortunately, what sticks out is that it looks like an Xbox game! There's nothing (apart from the water) that makes the game stand out from the previous generation. I know this shouldn't matter, and it's the gameplay and story that's important - but all the textures are REALLY low-resolution and the trees and plants (of which there are lots) look frankly embarrasing. Enemys don't react when hit by bullets. All that happens is a small spurt of blood. Hmmm. But, I'm really looking forward to getting into the game, and I'm sure the multiplayer will be a blast! Another quick note - I realised today that those Samsung monitors that are on the 360 pods are rubbish! The quality is awful! Haven't played one since before I got my HD, and the quality is notibly worse. Argh. I was going to get one as well, because I thought that'd be the one to get.

But you can't have custom matches can you? I thought it was just quick matches... Maybe I'm wrong! I'm loving the demo! It plays really well and I can see the full game taking up LOADS of my live time. It's a bit upsetting that I don't think I'll have enough time to give to these new games since I got Oblivion. I'm totally hooked.

I was wondering this too. My Gamecube looks cringe-worthy on my new HD-TV, with the standard lead that came with it. I'd like a component(? is that right?) cable, but dont know what to get.

I picked up Oblivion at midnight from ASDA. Gosh! It's pretty overwhelming.

YEH, CHEERS.

How is Call of Duty so popular on Live? I admit, I've had a COUPLE of good games, but most of the time it's offensively bad.

No they're not! That's a demo to show off DirectX 10! It's been going round for ages now.

This is all just speculation remember. And 'Forerunner' could easily just be a code name. It's GOT to have Halo in the title, right?

And it's not just the graphics that make you shout KIDDY! Apparently it's aimed at the younger market, with the cartoon being launched shortly before the game. By the time the game comes out, the cartoon will have made the brand so embarrasing, I definately won't want to buy it.

Hmmm, not sure about Viva Pinata yet. The graphics are certainly lovely, but I don't know whether it'll be the kind of thing that'll keep me playing... Looking forward to seeing more of it, though! One thing... they're obviously going for a Pokemon style thing, but the Pinatas don't have that brilliant character design that each pokemon has. It's a bit like the elementals in Kameo - they're a bit uninspired. Hmmm, we'll see.

Yeh, King Kong is the same. It looks rubbish!

It's not even the graphics. I can live without good graphics. The characters handle sooooo badly, the frame-rate is bad, there's no indication that you're actually hitting an opponent... it's just a horrible, car crash of a game.

Well I've obviously played the demo, haven't I? So can I not say that it's rubbish? No?

I think The Outfit is probably the worst 360 game I've played yet.

The demo is taking THE LONGEST TIME to download.

Yeh, this happens loads on UK 360s apparently. It happened to me. If you change your 360 to 50hz, it solves it. It's well annoying, and nothing wrong with your console. It just struggles when in 60hz mode. I recently got an HD TV, and seeing as HD doesn't use hertz, this solved it. Absolutely no problems now.

Yay, so GRAW and Oblivion ARE both out in March! Hooray!

Well, my friends bringing it round tomorrow. I'm not expecting much to be honest.

Wow! This is insane! About a month ago, after playing the Full Auto demo, I wrote a particularily scathing attack on the game on a friends blog. A few days after, we recieved an email from a marketing company saying this.... From : Lauren <[email protected]> Sent : 09 February 2006 02:45:26 To : [email protected] Subject : Full Auto Hi! I'm contacting you on behalf of Sega and M80. I was reading your blog entry, http://stuffandshitiscool.blogspot.com/200...ed-to-sega.html, and noticed that you had a less than favorable experience with the Full Auto Demo. We were very sorry to hear that you didn't enjoy the demo, however, as you may have heard, the final Full Auto is very different from the demo. It has improved frame rate, AI, car control, and art. We're so confident in Full Auto that we would like to offer you a free copy of the final release of Full Auto to see if you like it more than the demo. Would you be interested? Please let me know. Thank you! Lauren, M80 [email protected] http://www.m80im.com / http://www.m80teams.com Obviously, this looked like a marketing scam. Their website doesn't mention any connection with Sega or anything. But the other day, the game arrived! It's a US copy, but it's region free!

Yeh, of course, but it won't be on HD, will it?

It's alriiiight, but just doesn't look that great once you've got used to HD. I'm REALLY fucked off that Nintendo are choosing to support HD after seeing the difference that it makes. All the wires are horrible, aren't they! I've literally got nowhere to hide them, though, and I've always got at least five consoles connected and a DVD player and a Sky Digital box, so there are lots of them!